


the hills are alive with the sound of orgies

by preromantics



Category: Glee RPF
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-11
Updated: 2011-05-11
Packaged: 2017-10-19 07:01:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/198194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/preromantics/pseuds/preromantics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Valentine's Day phone call. <i>Chris doesn't get a word out in greeting before Darren starts talking. "I know, I know, why are you getting a phone call from a weird stranger dude on Valentine's at eight, when clearly both parties on this line should be out having fantastic single-and-famous Glee groupie orgies with leopard print themes, but -- hey. There."</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	the hills are alive with the sound of orgies

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on LJ: 2/16/11.

Chris is -- alright he's pretty surprised when his phone lights up with a call, sitting on his living room floor trying to decide what movie about love to torture himself with this evening, and he's more surprised to see the photograph Darren had taken of himself when he entered himself into Chris' contacts -- face tilted to the side and his mouth split into a wide, almost deranged, grin, staring up at him from the floor.

Chris doesn't get a word out in greeting before Darren starts talking. "I know, I know, why are you getting a phone call from a weird stranger dude on Valentine's at eight, when clearly both parties on this line should be out having fantastic single-and-famous Glee groupie orgies with leopard print themes, but -- hey. There."

Chris isn't sure if he should laugh or not, so he compromises by snorting through his nose in a decidedly unattractive way. He isn't sure what to tackle first. "Do all of your mental orgies have leopard print themes? Also, I hate to break it to you, being new and all, but I'm pretty sure a Glee groupie orgy would be, a. pretty disturbing, and b. completely illegal in so many ways."

"We've never talked on the phone, man, I thought it would be a good time to rectify that," Darren says. 

Chris leans against his entertainment center (compliments of Ikea, and thank god for cheap swedish furniture that happens to make Chris feel like the ultimate handy man and more accomplished than Martha Stewart when he finally pieces together everything out of the box) and laughs. "And you thought talking about groupie orgies would be the best way to break our talking on the phone virginity? You are a stranger man than I thought, Darren Criss."

"Speaking of virginity," Darren says, "I was going to open with that, all, you know I lost mine on Valentine's Day? Except I thought that would be too much for our first time. That's more of a face-to-face, drunk on peach schnapps sort of conversation, right?"

"And yet," Chris says. This is kind of -- fun. Something. He has Darren filed away permanently under a billion layers in his brain, predominantly labeled with things like  _co-worker_  and  _just read every interview with him ever!_  and some more embarrassing self-reassuring labels, but. Whatever. Chris weighs  _Funny Girl_  and _Moonstruck_  in his hands and tosses them into his 'maybe' pile.

Something on the other end of the line shuffles, Darren shifting things around or shifting himself, probably wearing something ridiculous that Chris isn't going to think about -- "Hey, I'm just trying to explain myself. I don't usually open phone conversations talking about orgies. I only save that for special occasions."

"Excuses," Chris says, but pauses. "I wasn't going to admit this, but since you're the one that called me during prime date or bedroom time on Valentine's Day itself, I'll go ahead and say it, because you should know --" he sucks in a dramatic breath, "I think you're really lame." 

Darren laughs, loud and sharp and sudden in Chris' ear. "Oh my god," he says, "that's so not where I thought that sentence was going to go."

Chris tosses  _Lady and the Tramp_  into the maybe pile and doesn't think about pointing it out to Darren. "Kind of the point," he says.

"Guess what I'm doing," Darren says.

"I don't want to know," Chris says, automatically. Darren will tell him anyway, Chris has already learned that, and he kind of appreciates Darren's constant enthusiasm more than he likes it in anyone else. 

"Trying to find a movie that will make me cry and feel sad about being dateless and orgy-less today and maybe make me feel like writing a Grammy winning record," Darren says. Chris can practically see him: nodding along to his own words, grinning in a careful, self-depreciating blink and you'll miss it way, completely earnest. 

Chris looks down at his own movies. "I can't tell if you're serious or if you're segueing into a way to tell me how awesome the Grammys were last night."

"They were fantastically awesome," Darren says, "but I'm serious. I definitely was staring at my phone wondering who would be able to advise me on all the problems in my life, including the movie thing, and I kept getting stuck on your name. So, recommend me, oh wise Colfer."

Chris feels his own face scrunch up. He's not going to be flattered by the sentiment, that's ridiculous, he's completely not. "I'm -- I'm considering  _The Sound of Music_  myself, actually," he says after a pause, fingers curling around his DVD. 

Darren coughs obnoxiously, and Chris catches something about Julie Andrews but not much else. He isn't sure how to convey sticking his tongue out over the phone but he tries.

"Hey," Darren says after a beat, "we should watch it together over the phone." 

"The entire thing?" Chris asks, as if his brain has already agreed that staying on the phone with Darren for three hours while still managing to compartmentalize his very blurry-lined absolutely non-existant feelings is completely plausible. 

"All of it," Darren says. 

"I --" Chris starts. He tries to think of something to say, something that decidedly isn't about how he really doesn't live more than a short drive away at the moment, and wouldn't it be easier to just come over and watch in the dark on his couch on the worst commercial and Hallmark-fueled romantic holiday of the year? 

"Do you have other plans?" Darren asks, though not in an obnoxious way. Chris nearly hears a little bit of hesitation. 

"My orgy isn't scheduled until eleven, so we have time," Chris says, and Darren makes a warm, amused sort of noise through Chris' phone speaker that Chris can't help but grin out. 

"Let's get our Julie Andrews on, then," Darren says.

"I feel like those words should not be in two sentences so close together," Chris says, and he puts down the phone a second later on Darren's instruction so they can both set up their movies. 

It's -- it's actually pretty fun, and if Chris had a list of his top Valentine's Day events ever he might put this year up right at the top. (Which he doesn't, at all, even though sometimes he still thinks about how Clayton sat next to him in third grade and gave him one of the big Valentine's cards with two extra pieces of candy taped to it and his named signed super carefully on the 'From' line, and how he'd been so pleased by the gesture without really getting why, just, he doesn't actually have a list.) 

It only takes a minute into the opening for Darren to start humming along, sporadically singing half-lines until Chris sighs and settles himself fully onto his couch, his phone hard against his ear and grins. "Are you going to sing along?" he asks. 

"I thought you'd never ask," Darren says, barely waiting a second to sing along in earnest. It turns into a sort of movie sing-along the entire time, and Chris doesn't curl his toes into the couch when they get to  _Sixteen Going on Seventeen_ , not at all. 

"I think," Chris says, as the chorus reprise of the opening starts up at the end, "my ear has either fallen off or gone numb." 

Darren laughs, low and quiet, and Chris can hear the sort of soft scratchiness indicative of movement on Darren's end of the line and thinks it sounds like stretching, sort of content, which is a ridiculous thought, but it makes Chris close his eyes briefly and roll his shoulders back into the couch. 

"Hey," Darren says softly, a few seconds later, the mostly-matched end credit music muting on his end so Chris' television suddenly seems too loud, "thanks."

"For what?" Chris asks, muting his own tv and instantly regretting it. It's too silent. 

"For humoring me," Darren says, "seriously, I don't know many people who would be awesome enough to have an impromptu phone sing-a-long for three hours with me."

"Not a problem," Chris says, because really, it wasn't. "Usually I'm always bribing people to sing along to movie musicals with me." 

"We should do it again," Darren says, suddenly enthusiastic on his end, and Chris was kidding, he really has never bribed anyone to sing, except for maybe once, but. "Maybe Moulin Rogue? You like that, right?" 

Chris pauses, just because, well, yes, of course he does. And yes he'd do this again. Just -- it's Darren, and it's that really jumbled line in his head where really awesome attractive guy with similar interests and coworker and little thoughts about inevitable script moments and five o'clock shadow on set that all the make-up girls complain about and --

"You're going to think I'm totally crazy," Darren says, unaware of Chris' mild internal freak out, "but we could do that now. In person, because my phone isn't going to last longer and it's not like I'm unable to drive twenty minutes." 

Chris is pretty sure he manages to keep his brain from not jumbling up at all once. "Er --" he starts. 

"Never mind," Darren says, almost entirely too enthusiastic for Chris to buy it, "it's late and everything, and you said you had that eleven o'clock orgy to get to anyway, and --"

"You should come," Chris says, cutting him off and rolling his eyes up at the ceiling. 

There is a pause where Darren doesn't say anything and Chris thinks about hitting himself in the face. "I'll bring Ben and Jerry's," Darren says, "an entire display full."

"You do that," Chris says, and when he hangs up a minute later he's not sure how to untuck his legs and get up off the couch for at least five minutes. 

  
-

  
Darren shows up just as Chris debates the appropriate amount of movie-watching-with-new-friend-and-only-friend lighting to use in his living room. He shows up on Chris' doorstep in jeans and a shirt with a neck so worn Chris can see the skin of Darren's collarbones through the threadbare patches and --

"You have a rose -- in your mouth," Chris says by way of greeting, glancing up from the paper grocery bag in Darren's arm to his neck to the actual rose in his mouth in quick succession. 

Darren shifts the bag in his arms to pluck the rose out. "Too much? All the flowers were half off since the night's almost over, and there was only this one rose left and it looked all sad and lonely, so I bought it." 

He extends his hand to Chris and presents it. "It's for the occasion," he says, and Chris takes it and rolls his eyes, the thoughts in his head completely compartmentalized and normal and not bouncing up and down at all. "I think my lip is bleeding now, though," Darren adds.

Chris takes the bag of ice cream from him too, mostly for something to do with his hands and makes a sort of shrug gesture to indicate Darren should step inside instead of standing in the doorway looking -- looking like whatever. "Kitchen," Chris says, because apparently eleven at night is his cut off for general articulateness, and he turns 

"Here," Chris says, turning to the counter to grab a napkin once they make it to the kitchen, wetting it in the sink and handing it to Darren, who's tongue is running -- obnoxiously, yes, obnoxiously not any other sort of adverb -- over his apparently bloodied lip. 

"Do you think this is weird?" Darren asks a second later muffled by the napkin against his mouth. 

Chris turns from the cabinet with his bowls in it and pauses. He thinks having Darren leaning against his kitchen sink late at night on a consumer-fueled symbolic romantic holiday is pretty weird, yeah. "You? Yes. I hate to break it to you, but you are pretty weird," he says. 

Darren makes a face, a twisty sort of wide-eyed thing that makes Chris glad he couldn't see Darren's face all through Sound of Music, because it was enough just hearing his comments and him singing and everything and --

"Clearly, but, no. Do you think it's weird that on the way here I kept thinking about other ways I could be spending tonight and coming over here to hang out with you and watch a musical and eating a pint of ice cream while possibly indulging in couch-cuddles kept making the top of the list?" Darren says, all at once and still muffled by the napkin. 

Chris' brain stops on something about cuddles. Darren laughs in a self-conscious sort of way. 

"You must be really lonely," Chris says, even though he doesn't mean to, and it sounds a little snappy. 

Darren shakes his head. "Nope," he says, "I just think you're pretty cool. And I like musicals. Was the cuddling part too much? I just talk, sometimes."

"We could do that, though," Darren adds, when Chris can't figure out what to say, his face intent and focused in a way that makes Chris look away and down at the cartons of ice cream now sitting by his hands, "on the couch. I'll cry on your shoulder at all the appropriate parts and it will be messy and fantastic." 

"I think," Chris says, measured, "we should eat all of this ice cream." 

"All of it?" Darren asks, switching out of his mild moment of intent and into general earnestness in a way that both relieves Chris and makes him want -- something. More insistance or finer guidelines to his life or whatever. 

"All of it," Chris agrees, mostly because he's pretty sure he needs to indulge for one night. Definitely sure.

  
-

  
Except, Darren does sort of curl up next to him on Chris' admittedly large couch, warm and insistant against his side until Chris relaxes down fifteen minutes into the movie, and Darren even leans into Chris' shoulder to look away from the screen just as Chris starts to get emotional himself and --

"If I fall asleep on you," Darren says, "you can push me off and kick me out, I won't mind." 

"What if I fall asleep first?" Chris asks, because between trying to relax and the lighting in the room and Darren warm against his side in a way that's entirely too comfortable, falling asleep seems like a pretty inescapable thing. 

Darren makes a thoughtful noise into Chris' shoulder that Chris can feel vibrate down his spine. "Then I'll fall asleep on top of you and I'll have to have to wake you up in the morning so you can make coffee, since coffee machines and I don't really get along."

"I --" Chris starts.

"I don't know where your next sentence is going to go," Darren says, cutting Chris off before he can attempt to organize his brain, "but preemptively, you should know I'm pretty okay with all of this."

"All of what?" Chris asks. 

"All of whatever," Darren says, which doesn't help at all, except he sort of presses in closer to Chris side, leaning his head down. 

"Whatever," Chris repeats, looking briefly up at his ceiling before turning down to look at Darren's face on his shoulder. Darren is lazily grinning up at him, and Chris half-expects him to do something like shrug or sit up and say,  _well it's been great! I'll see you on set!_  or something, but instead his grin just grows and he ducks his face into the crook of Chris' neck and settles it there. 

"Warm," Darren says, and Chris opens his mouth to say something but closes it just as quickly. Maybe, just maybe, he doesn't need to awkwardly straddle the self-drawn line in his head. For now, at least. If Darren wants to fall asleep on top of him out of loneliness or boredom or general temporary insanity, Chris is not going to persuade him out of it.

It takes a few minutes of blearily trying to focus on the movie and also relax fully at the same time for Chris to finally slide down the couch in one movement, the weight of Darren's body following him. "I hope you don't snore," Chris says, sounding far less imposed than he means to, warm and sleepy and sort of pleased. 

"I can't make any promises," Darren says, something warm in his voice that Chris isn't going to bother analyzing.

It takes Chris less time to fall asleep on the couch than he's prepared for -- he's pretty sure he falls asleep before Darren, because the last thing he remembers when he wakes up, overly warm and overly stiff and yet somehow entirely comfortable, the weight of Darren across his side something Chris doesn't want to roll away from at all, is Darren blinking sleepily up at him in the light of the movie credits, and his lips just lightly dragging against the cotton of Chris' shirt over his shoulder. 

He keeps his eyes closed against the morning light in the living room and mentally starts a list of his favorite Valentine's Day events -- or mentally revising, if he has to admit to himself he'd always had some sort of list, with something about third grade at the top -- bumping last night straight to the top. Darren lets out a little snore somewhere in the vicinity of Chris' shoulder and Chris grins despite himself because, maybe his mental do-not-cross lines were meant to be crossed after all.

  
  
  



End file.
